Entries by emptywheel

In Govt We Do Not Trust

I’m still following up on the question of the way in which the Rather complaint invokes the debate on Hamdi. I wanted to draw extended attention to this article. In it, Tim Grieve susses out precisely what seems to be the reason Rather included the Abu Ghraib details in his complaint.

Did Clement know he was misleading the justices, or was he kept out ofthe loop so that he could avoid revealing

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Abu Ghraib, Hamdi, and Rather

I’ve been meaning to go back to compare the chronology laid out by Dan Rather in his complaint as it pertains to Abu Ghraib with the chronology of the Taguba investigation and the Hamdi case. Two things stick out. First, Myers pretended to be ignorant of the details of the abuse on May 6, several weeks after he called Dan Rather personally to spike–or delay–the story.

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How to Spend $57 Million on Cocktail Weenies

Larry Johnson does the math, so I don’t have to. Fitzgerald’s total costs to investigate the deliberate outing of a CIA spy, through March 31, amount to $2,396,283. Ken Starr’s total costs, to investigate a failed land deal and a blow job, amount to $59,463,703. I guess all those cocktail weenies Starr bought for the press really add up, huh?

Now that Larry pulled all these numbers together, though, I’d like to

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Wilkes Is On His Own

Via chrisc, Judge Burns has severed the trials of Brent Wilkes and John Michael, on account of the health problems of the latter.

Ajudge Monday severed the trials of ex-defense contractor Brent Wilkesand banker John Michael, who are charged in connection with thecorruption scandal that sent former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham toprison.

U.S.District Judge Larry Burns postponed Michael’s trial indefinitely afterattorney Raymond Granger said his client had been diagnosed with viralmeningitis.Pretrialmotions are scheduled

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One Small Victory for Oversight

One lingering suspicion that they’re just moving this off the books:

After several requests from the Homeland Security Committee callingfor a moratorium on the controversial use of spy satellite imagery fordomestic purposes, the Department has heeded the call and delayed itsplanned October 1st launch of its new National Applications Office(NAO). The Department has cited the need to address unanswered privacyand civil liberties questions from Congress – as addressed in theCommittee’s September 6th

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What Secrets Is Wilkes Planning to Spring?

Paul Kiel reported this morning that Brent Wilkes doesn’t want the government to mention the prostitutes that Wilkes engaged as part of his bribe scheme to influence Duke Cunningham (here’s the filing). And if the Court doesn’t exclude the testimony about prostitutes, Geragos threatens, he’s going to haul the prostitute whose calendar has been submitted as a business record into court so he can delve into her record-keeping practices.

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One Texas Oilman Pleads Guilty

It may not be the Texas oilmen we’d like to plead guilty, but it is going to make others think twice before they bribe dictators to do their oil deals.

Texas oilman Oscar Wyatt Jr. pleaded guilty Monday to charges that hepaid millions of dollars to Iraqi officials to illegally win contractsconnected to the United Nations oil-for-food program.

[snip]

During the trial, prosecutors demonstrated that Wyatt had such a closerelationship with Iraq that he

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The Cost of Doing Business

Walter Pincus analyzes one of the contracts that Henry Waxman is looking at to determine how much more Blackwater’s mercenaries are costing us than a law-abiding US soldier. Pincus notes that Petraeus makes roughly $493 a day. This doesn’t appear to include benefits; figuring benes make up 1/3 of someone’s compensation–which in the private sector is often about right, but in the military is probably too small–then Petraeus might cost us,

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AT&T’s Latest Censorship

It’s a good think I chose Comcast’s oligopoly service for broadband internet service and not AT&T (my two easy choices for real broadband). That’s because I tend to point out that our government is becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T. And AT&T just changed its acceptable use policy to prevent you from using AT&T’s Toobz to tell others about the bad things AT&T is doing (via boing boing).

Failure to observe

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Counterproliferationinsurgency

I’ve got two small points to make about Sy Hersh’s latest, which has been covered generally just about everywhere.

What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism.

The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, thePresident and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign toconvince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threathas failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that

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